The stealth campaign of Ted Cruz.

By Rob Janicki

Ted Cruz has been pretty much ruled out as a serious contender in the Republican presidential nomination process since his announced candidacy on March 23rd this year.  That is, until now.  Cruz appears to have silently laid the ground work for an epic challenge to the GOP establishment candidates and outsider Donald Trump.  The most recent polling shows Cruz and Rubio on the rise with Trump plateauing and Dr. Carson actually losing momentum.  I think we can safely forget about the other single digit candidates going forward.

Looking at the nuts and bolts of the Cruz campaign.

Cruz has raised more money than any Republican, except Jeb Bush, and more non-PAC money than any other Republican.  Cruz is reported to have more cash on hand than any of his GOP rivals and is on pace to improve on his previous fund raising. 

Vastly underrated and underreported, Cruz was the first candidate to recruit chairmen in all 171 counties in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.  This is no small feat and has shown the political pros that Cruz is one serious candidate.  Success begets success, especially in future fund raising and Cruz is right on track according to his master plan.

A side note of consequence, but essentially unreported, is that Cruz, and no other Republican, has been sending out representatives to the five U.S. Territories, Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Virgin Islands, in order to lock in those extra convention delegates who could prove decisive, if the nomination process goes down to a brokered convention in Cleveland, beginning July 21, 2016.  I'm thinking that Cruz sees his victory path in a brokered convention, should Trump fail to win the delegate count outright through the primaries ending in early June 2016.

If Cruz has been anything in this campaign to date, and with a steely eye to the convention, it's that he seems to have planned for every possible contingency and maybe even some unforeseen events, to craft his path to victory.

Cruz's planning see's Trump failing to win the outright delegate count to lock up the nomination before the convention.  He has evaluated how the convention delegates will fall once they are no longer required to cast ballots for their legally intended candidate.

Cruz has been shadowing Trump and has an eye to those candidates who will not make it to the end, most notably Dr. Carson.  He has calculated that those Carson delegates will most likely fall to him rather than Trump, who has burned just about every bridge with his personal attacks on Dr. Carson.

The final act to be played out is how the other candidates in the low single digits and their supporting delegates will fall at the convention.  Cruz knows that Bush support will eventually find its way to Rubio based upon ideological similarities and historical associations.  This campaign, if nothing else, will be the most exciting in my memory of Republican national presidential nominating conventions.